Dancing Nuke to Nuke: Obama in Jerusalem plus: PRWastch on The Swindle and Shahid Butar on drones

Like a couple of pit bulls sniffing arseholes President Obama and PM Netanyahu met in Jerusalem the other day. Obama pledged "eternal" support (By which he meant military hardware, I believe...) for Israel and Netanyahu claimed he wanted peace talks. I wish Obama was lying and I hope Netanyahu was telling the truth.

The Singularity in this equation is this: Israelis have taken land, homes, olive grove, the water beneatht the desert, the very air, the sky above. and left the Palestinian people refuges in their own land. Israel is committing genocidse in slow motioon, the drops of blood filling the days. In serving this unholy goal, Israel has created a system of Apartheid more viscious, severe and deadly than anything that existed in South Africa. No one believes Netanyahu. Even while he sign this mythical peace agreement, Setlers will be destroying Palestinian homes, lives, lands and future.

And Nuked-up Israel continues to goad the US into a war with Iran over that nation's presumed nuclear dreams. While the whole world knows full well that Israel's nuclear stockpiles are far beyond the bound of international law. That Israel is not party to non-proliferation agreements, That Israel is a stranger to the IAEA.

And here's our dear President once again, pants around his ankles, taking it hard up the arse by the Middle East's most heavily-armed, paranoid, 'terror-tory'.

Why do world leaders continue to look the other way?

If any other nation engaged in the crimes that Israel is engaged in, the world's Top Cop, the US would spring to action in the name of Freedom! Liberty! and the Free Market!

I will speak…until the alarm is sounded from coast to coast that our Constitution is important, that your rights to trial by jury are precious, that no American should be killed by a drone on American soil without first being charged with a crime, without first being found to be guilty by a court.

Sen. Paul launched his filibuster in response to a letter from Attorney General Eric Holder insinuating the authority to use drones to kill Americans within the US. After his concerns prompted a later letter conceding that the government lacks such authority, Sen. Paul ended his filibuster and Brennan was confirmed by a vote of 63-34, ending a brief period when CIA abuses were at least theoretically accountable to the public.

Especially encouraging was the reaction of other Senators, and the public, to Sen. Paul’s filibuster. While he began his filibuster without support, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) raised his voice, making it a bipartisan effort. While Wyden was the only Democrat to raise concerns about checks & balances, several GOP senators eventually joined, including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Mike Lee (R-UT), Ted Cruz (R-TX), John Thune (R-SD), Ron Johnson (R-WI), Tim Scott (R-SC), and Dean Heller (R-NV).

Holder’s assurances to Sen. Paul were welcome, but must also be taken with a grain of salt. It behooves observers to understand why, for several reasons, Holder’s statement may be less secure than we would ideally hope.

Holder’s letter does not define “combat,” and without the public release of all of the currently secret Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) memos, the full extent of the program and its legal basis remain unknown. Moreover, the administration’s killing of multiple US citizens without evidence that they were engaged in combat belies assurances that the CIA heeds the legal constraints articulated by OLC.

Reflecting their own confusion, many have suggested that Paul's concern about extrajudicial assassination reflects paranoia. Unfortunately, it's only paranoid if unfounded.

Whatever Obama apologists may claim, our government has in fact executed multiple US citizens without trial. And a potential drone strike within the US hardly requires a flight of imagination: the manhunt that mobilized across Southern California to find LAPD officer Chris Dorner presents a scenario all too likely to recur.

Ultimately, the people of the United States and our often timid representatives in Washington must demand a halt to lawless assassination in contravention of the Constitution, international law and human rights law. The broad claims staked out in the leaked white paper justifying targeted killing make clear that the administration is currently operating under a rubric that violates all three.